Decided to start a new thread building on the 'Increased Job Postings' posts...
I'd like to hear about other local companies from present and former employees. Here's a bit about me & mine: In my present position(titled Computer Specialist 1) at Nature's Sunshine Products, I'm expected to man the help desk for 3 hours a day. Not too bad really, considering I'm the new guy to IT (hired in July 2006). Good benefits(they even offer a health plan that is 100% paid for by the employer that I opted for), good manager in the Spanish Fork location that is close to my home in Springville. Lots of apparent nepotism as I've seen several others' relatives/family members working there, but I got hired without a family connection.
From my experience nepotism seems to be more prevalent in Utah Valley.
The organizational attitude seems to be hierarchical and less knowledge centric. There is a lot of tribal knowledge(unwritten information that is not commonly known by others within a company) and dependence upon individuals instead of emphasis on the value of sharing information. On the whole I feel I'm treated fairly there and enjoy working in close proximity to my home in Springville. A criticism I have is the company's tendency toward Windows-centric environments. Currently there is a lot of dependence on a mainframe(Unisys) back end that is very loosely planned to be migrated toward a Windows environment. There are some Linux servers there(running the help desk software & VMWare, for example), but the prevailing attitude towards Linux seems to be antagonistic due to lack of information and experience. I find it difficult to answer some of the concerns and questions to keep people informed re: Linux as well, because of the complexity of the current environment. I'm not a Windows Server expert(yet), and questions of interoperability and migration between the 3 different platforms often exceed my current knowledge. -- Lars /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
